Nach Archives - The 91Ӱ�� School

Yeshivat 91Ӱ�� Welcomes Rabbanit Shani Taragin

Yaelle — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 14:22:02 +0000

Yeshivat 91Ӱ��’s Beit Midrash was thrilled to welcome Rabbanit Shani Taragin this week, for classes spanning the gamut of Judaic Studies. Rabbanit Taragin’s partnership with Yeshivat 91Ӱ��, in which she visits for one week out of every six, began last year and will continue throughout 2022-23. Students are excited to be learning Torat Eretz Yisrael in their classrooms.

Freshman Avigayil Geyer explained that Rabbanit Taragin’s class has complemented what the students are learning in their Masechet Brachot shiur with 91Ӱ�� Associate Principal Rabbi Joshua Wald. “Rabbanit Taragin’s class offered a different perspective, and centered on practical halacha—what you can do during tefillah to make it more meaningful.”

Multiple students related how they found Rabbanit Taragin’s brilliance and leadership inspiring, and noted how she encouraged the whole class in their learning and discussion. “It was nice learning about the unique experience of women and tefillah,” said freshman Ariella Geliebter about one of Rabbanit Taragin’s classes this week. “Rabbanit Taragin is very engaging and so personable.”

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Yeshivat 91Ӱ�� Partners With Rabbanit Shani Taragin

Cheryl Leiser — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 14:56:55 +0000

Yeshivat 91Ӱ�� is thrilled to be bringing Rabbanit Shani Taragin onto its Judaic Studies faculty this year, infusing Torat Eretz Yisrael into the school’s limudei kodesh program. Rabbanit Taragin, who serves as educational director of World Mizrachi as well as the Matan Eshkolot Tanach Teachers’ Education Program, will be spending one week per month in person (and the rest of the time on Zoom) teaching students in our Beit Midrash Track as well as contributing to professional development among our Judaic Studies faculty. The partnership is the first of its kind among American high school yeshivot.

Rabbanit Taragin says she hopes that the partnership will ultimately open the door to help students develop relationships with female Torah personalities from Eretz Yisrael during their high school years. “Students wait and anticipate for ‘the year in Israel’ to develop relationships with Torah teachers from their yeshivot/midrashot,” she said. “This program provides for weekly Zoom shiurim and bi-monthly in-person visits to jump-start their enthusiasm for in-depth Torah learning and familiarization with Torat Eretz Yisrael.”

Bringing Torat Eretz Yisrael to America will mean that students stand to develop the methodological skills that permeate Torah study throughout Israel. “Torat Eretz Yisrael is unique in encompassing all aspects of Torah learning in our lives,” Rabbanit Taragin explained. “Our history, geography, culture, politics come to life in our learning of Tanach and Torah Shebe’al-Peh. Anatot is not just the hometown of Yiirmiyahu HaNavi in a pasuk—it is a suburb of Yerushalayim that may be visited to appreciate the timeless words of the prophet. Shevi’it is not just a masechet to be learned, it is lived and observed (particularly this year!). All too often students in America see their Torah learning as independent and separate from their everyday ‘modern living.’ Torat Eretz Yisrael is about learning our texts of the past as reflective and relevant in the present and for the future as we build and rebuild ourselves in Eretz Yisrael, infusing our everyday lives with Torah values.”

“Torah curricula in Eretz Yisrael have been developed with the infusion of religious values and incorporation of textual, philosophical and thought-provoking methodologies,” she continued. “The history, geography and topography of the Land of Israel are incorporated in Tanach study and because there isn’t a Hebrew-language barrier, more time is placed on studying the ‘big ideas’ of Tanach. What a shame if students in chul [the Diaspora] didn’t benefit from the Torah that emanates from Tzion! Why wait till their year in Israel?!”

Students at 91Ӱ�� have already felt the impact of Rabbanit Taragin’s presence, during her first week on campus earlier in November. “Rabbanit Shani Taragin gave a shiur to my class about Shemot, perakim aleph and bet,” recounted Eliora Gissinger ‘24. “She taught us about the chiasmus in these perakim, and also illustrated how the different stages of affliction that were imposed by Pharoah occurred simultaneously. My friends and I were so impressed by her shiur that we sat in on other shiurim of hers throughout the day. We learned about Eliyahu at Har HaCarmel and Har Chorev, and why these locations were specifically chosen for those stories. We also attended a class where she spoke about the halachic perspective on tolerance and acceptance of ideological opposition.”

Eliora also said she admired how Rabbanit Taragin managed to develop relationships with students while teaching the class as a whole. “At the end of the day, she offered to have a smaller chavrusa with us where she addressed our personal questions,” said Eliora. “I admire her vast knowledge and appreciate the Torah that she embodies.”

Rabbanit Taragin’s expertise spans numerous realms of Torah learning and she will be lecturing on a variety of topics. “Rabbanit Taragin is an incredible role model for Torah scholarship, women’s Torah leadership, education, as well as yirat Shamayim, and we are so lucky to have her here with us,” said Associate Principal Rabbi Joshua Wald in his introductory remarks at one of the shiurim.

Likewise, Rabbanit Taragin is looking forward to working with the faculty members of Yeshivat 91Ӱ��. “The gains are mutual in that I gain a greater exposure and appreciation of the phenomenal curricula and student programming at 91Ӱ��,” she said. “91Ӱ�� is not only one of the leading Modern Orthodox high schools in North America—it is a Torah institution always seeking to further motivate its students to learn more by providing as many opportunities for Torah growth as possible. Shiurim are taught by talmidei and talmidot chachamim and the school invests in relationships beyond the classroom. As the first high school in North America to open a women’s Beit Midrash Program for aspiring Torah teachers parallel to a men’s kollel, 91Ӱ�� is the yeshiva most suited for a partnership, particularly with female Torah scholars to further high-level Torah learning from Eretz Yisrael and provide role models of Yirat Shamayim.”

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Beni Romm ’21 Talks Tanach

Yaelle — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 17:52:48 +0000

The night before Yom Ha’atzmaut, Beni Romm, a Yeshivat 91Ӱ�� senior from White Plains, went to sleep before the sun, at 7:30 p.m. Romm, the first place winner of the 2020 Dr. Shimshon Issacheroff Chidon HaTanach USA, needed to be ready to represent America at the International Chidon HaTanach, scheduled for 4:00 a.m. EST (11:00 a.m. Israeli time). By 2:30 a.m., his tech connection was up and running. In an ordinary year, Romm and fellow competitors, from around the world, would have spent a week touring Israel and bonding. However, COVID-19 meant that only Israelis would be on stage at Jerusalem’s Binyanei Ha’Umah; everyone else was virtual. By the time most of America woke up, Romm had climbed to the top three in the notoriously difficult competition, with Israeli contestants gaining the other top slots.

For Romm, the experience of studying Tanach has been an immersive one, suffused with religious meaning. “The study of any literature allows one to appreciate the mind of its author,” explained Romm. “When one immerses himself in a particular canon of literature, he finds his thoughts shaped by and expressed in terms of the literature he is studying. This takes on religious significance when that literature is Tanach, and one realizes that his own mind is being brought into greater alignment with the Perfect Mind, the ultimate Author of the Tanach.”

Romm’s favorite part of Tanach? “Kohelet, by virtue of the fact that it’s in Tanach at all,” he said. “It raises many of the sentiments extolled as the pinnacle of wisdom by today’s ‘New Atheists’ (an apt demonstration of its own aphorism, ‘Ein chadash tachat hashemesh,’ There is nothing new under the sun). By canonizing it, the (proto-)rabbis acknowledged that such musings, while poignant, are not the end of wisdom and man’s search for spiritual fulfillment, but only its beginning. ‘Sof davar hakol nishma, et ha-Elokim yera ve’et mitzvotav shemor’” “The end of the matter, all having been heard: fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole man.”

Romm also learned about what it takes to advance in the Chidon, striving for the seemingly impossible. “In general, long term, your brain is capable of so much more than you think it is,” said Romm. “Your memory and your mind is a muscle, just like anything else. And if you work it with discipline, you can learn far more than you thought capable.” Romm also thanked his Chidon coach, 91Ӱ�� Hebrew Department Chair and 2016 International Adult Chidon HaTanach Champion Rabbi Yair Shahak, “for his dedication to helping me prepare for the International Chidon. His coaching and advice have been invaluable.”

One of Shahak’s goals was to give Romm strategies to remember the tiniest details, and know as much as possible. “He studied day and night,” said Shahak, noting that Romm has a natural affinity for spotting connections in the text. “One of the things that struck me about Beni is how much he relies on and utilizes simple logic based on linguistic and historical sources to be able to identify answers. For example, he correctly identified that metziltayim (cymbals) only appears during Bayit Sheini, so any quote with that word will only appear in Ezra, Nehemiah or Divrei Hayamim. Or, for example, knowing the history and geography of empires—that also played into his success. To say that it’s been a joy learning with him is an understatement.”

Over the course of high school, Romm said that his Jewish education “has really come from both sides of the faculty: Judaic and secular studies. This is a really unique aspect of 91Ӱ��.” Outside the classroom, he founded a Chidon Club at 91Ӱ�� and recruited a large membership. Earlier this year, 17 91Ӱ�� students advanced past the preliminary exam to the national round of the Chidon this May. When asked what advice he would give to new participants, Romm cited Mishlei 23:1: כי תצא ללחום את מושל בין תבין את אשר לפניך, “When you go out to fight against the ruler, you have to understand very well what’s in front of you,” said Romm.

“This holds true for every goal in life,” he explained. “You really have to understand what target you’re trying to achieve. With that in mind you can work towards that goal and be successful. My goal was really to master the material and win, and in that way I was able to gain a greater mastery of the material than if I were learning ‘lishma.’”

Yet, Romm is certainly no stranger to learning for its own sake. Now that the Chidon is over, he has set new goals: learn the remaining parts of Nevi’im Achronim to the same level which he prepared for the Chidon (“functionally equivalent to memorization”), sharpen his existing leining knowledge and complete shnayim mikra with the Septuagint with Koine Greek—with the aspiration of learning Greek so that he can study Second Temple and Mishnaic Judaism in college.

His work for the Chidon helped with it all. “As you’re learning you’re immediately, automatically connecting in your head all the places where similar words appear in Tanach,” he said, “as if you have a concordance in the back of your mind, and that’s a very useful tool to have.”

Romm believes that his ability to lein was indispensable in helping him learn and memorize as much as he did. He noted that boys are usually taught this skill in preparation for their bar mitzvah, while girls are not. This, to his mind, perpetuates a systemic inequality, to use contemporary terminology, when it comes to memorizing the text of the Torah and Nevi’im. “I think that this is not an ideal situation, because the Torah should be open equally to everyone,” said Romm. “We should not be putting pedagogical barriers in front of women when it comes to gaining mastery of Tanach.

“If I were to approach this problem, I would recommend that the community reconceptualize what the role of leining is—the learning of how to read and chant the Torah trop—and how it’s taught,” he explained. “Currently in the community, leining is associated with the public reading of Torah and Haftarah in the synagogue, but historically this was never the purpose of the leining. Cantillation exists not just in the parts that are read aloud in the synagogue but in all of Tanach, because it’s there to serve as both punctuation and an aid to memorization. Therefore, the skill of leining is not a skill in kriat Torah, but talmud Torah. Such that in order for there to be equality in the acquisition of skills in this area, Jewish schools should allocate class time to teaching the ta’amei mikra and how to lein.”

Romm is graduating from 91Ӱ�� this year, and plans to major in mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania following study at Yeshivat Har Etzion. He described the experience of briefly meeting people from Israel and around the world through the virtual Chidon programming as one of the highlights of the Chidon experience. “I hope to meet as many as I can next year in Israel,” he said.

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Yeshivat 91Ӱ�� Takes On Tanach

Yaelle — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 18:10:21 +0000

In preparation for the International Bible Contest for youth, Chidon HaTanach, in just a few weeks, 91Ӱ�� senior Beni Romm ‘21, the reigning Dr. Shimshon Issacheroff USA Chidon HaTanach Champion, went head to head on Wednesday with his Chidon coach, and Hebrew teacher, Rabbi Yair Shahak, first place winner of the 2016 International Adult Chidon HaTanach and 91Ӱ�� Hebrew department chair. The two competed against each other in a five-round mock Chidon covering material from 21 sefarim, in front of an excited, distanced audience of nearly 100 students. Dr. Yaelle Frohlich—91Ӱ�� history teacher and a 2016 International Adult Chidon semi-finalist—moderated the event with former National Champion Uriel Simpson ‘21, with contributions from Tamar Rosenfeld ‘23 and Shoshana Schwarz ‘23.

Romm has also been instrumental in recruiting new members to 91Ӱ��’s Chidon HaTanach Club (faculty adviser Rabbi Asher Bush), and it was announced this week that, following a 90-question preliminary exam on large portions of Tanach, 16 Yeshivat 91Ӱ�� students will have the opportunity to compete in the national round of the competition in early May: Tamar Rosenfeld ‘23, Josh Knoll ‘23, Ari Spivack ‘23, Maya Tratt ‘24, Eliora Gissinger ‘24, Elza Koslowe ‘23, Rami Kirsch ‘23, Gabe Rothman ‘23, Shoshana Schwarz ‘23, Liam Lewis ‘23, Ari Elkin ‘22, Rebecca Kermaier ‘23, Gavriel Weinstein ‘23, Sarit Greenwood ‘23, Alex Massel ‘23, and Ben Fisher ‘24.

“This year the excitement and level of achievement has been buoyed by the enthusiasm generated by our own national Chidon champion, senior Beni Romm, who has served as mentor to the group,” said Rabbi Bush.

Indeed, when all the students were brought together for a group photo, they eagerly discussed their Chidon test scores—but they weren’t talking about their own results. Rather, they were excited to tell the photographer about how well their friends had done, and about the joys of studying together.

“The best aspect of being a part of Chidon is being given the opportunity to learn Tanach in a way that emphasizes grasping the text in the original Hebrew along with being able to recognize and remember key phrases and little details of stories that I would not have picked up on otherwise,” said Tratt.

“I love finding connections between different sefarim and seeing how all of Tanach relates seamlessly,” added Kermaier.

Romm had words of encouragement for his fellow Cougars going into the national round: “Yishar Kochachem for all of the Tanakh that you have learned this year,” he said. “You should be proud of your hard work and dedication to Talmud Torah. The Chidon, however, offers an opportunity to more than just learn Torah. It offers an opportunity to know Torah, to internalize it, to approach mastery. This path is far more difficult than simply learning Torah, but also far more rewarding, in my experience. If you work towards this goal, you will be able to say of yourself: תורת אמת היתה בפיהו.”

In addition to the Chidon, Torah knowledge abounds in another extracurricular: Torah Bowl! Earlier this month, the Yeshivat 91Ӱ�� Girls Torah Bowl team won first place at their virtual meet. In preparation for the competition, they learned the last 12 perakim of Bamidbar along with Rashi’s commentary.

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91Ӱ�� Students Explore the Meaning of a Machzor Verse

Yaelle — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 14:13:23 +0000

In preparation for the Yamim Noraim, 91Ӱ�� sophomores in Rabbi Gedaliah Jaffe’s classes visited the 91Ӱ�� art studio. There, they got to explore the meaning of a verse in one of the most evocative piyyutim in the high holidays liturgy: “Ka-chomer be’yad ha-Yotzer,” a metaphor describing Am Israel to Hashem as being “like clay in the hands of the potter.” The metaphor’s original location in Yirmiyahu (18:6). 91Ӱ��’s Visual Arts Director Ahuva Winslow guided the students as they molded and created their own pottery, noting how the clay could be formed at will yet also pushed back against their hands. Thus, the hands-on lesson brought the pasuk to life for the students.

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Yeshivat 91Ӱ��-YU Kollel and Legacy Beit Midrash Fellows Programs Launch

Yaelle — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 14:32:48 +0000

Yeshivat 91Ӱ�� is thrilled to announce the launch of its new 91Ӱ��-YU Kollel and 91Ӱ��-Legacy Beit Midrash Fellows programs this year. The programs bring together 91Ӱ�� students with two cohorts of YU students, one with six semicha students from Yeshivat University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and the other with eight advanced students from Stern College for Women’s Legacy Heritage Jewish Educators Project. 91Ӱ�� juniors will have the opportunity to learn with the RIETS students and with the Legacy Heritage Fellows in Judaic Studies throughout the day.

While at 91Ӱ��, the YU participants will have the opportunity to hone their pedagogical skills in and outside of the classroom, and gain invaluable insight into the everyday workings of teaching in a yeshiva high school. In addition, the RIETS students will have their own seder and shiur under the guidance of the rosh kollel, 91Ӱ�� Talmud faculty member Rabbi Noah Gardenswartz. The Legacy Heritage Fellows will have shiur with 91Ӱ�� Tanach faculty member and freshman grade dean Shoshana Chanales, and the program will be under the guidance of Shani Taragin, who will be coming in monthly from Israel.

“The goals of the program are to enhance 91Ӱ�� as a yeshiva and makom Torah, with young men and women learning here seriously and modeling to the students what it means to choose to learn lishma as a young person,” said 91Ӱ�� Associate Principal Rabbi Joshua Wald. “The YU participants will be connected to the classrooms, which will enhance the learning of the students. It will provide students with more individualized attention in both Gemara and Chumash. In addition, 91Ӱ�� will serve as a training ground for these future educators.”

The YU participants will also take part in weekly discussions (coordinated by Chanales and 91Ӱ��’ Rabbi Shalom Richter) with seasoned 91Ӱ�� educators. The discussions will center around a variety of pedagogical issues, such as lesson planning, discipline and maintaining positive teacher-student relationships.

“The faculty at 91Ӱ�� are very warm. They seem excited and passionate about what they’re doing and it’s great to be here,” said recent musmach Rabbi Chaim Gerson, who is also completing his master’s in Jewish Education at YU’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration. He hopes that having the kollel at 91Ӱ�� will allow the high schoolers “to see that learning is cool, and it is fun.”

YU participant Penina Torczyner, who is completing a joint bachelor’s and master’s in Jewish education from Stern and Azrieli, agreed. “I hope the students will see that college students can take time out of their day and sit in the beit midrash and learn,” she said. “A Torah life is a Torat chayim and we want to show that it’s enjoyable as well.”

91Ӱ�� students are looking forward to having the program participants on campus. “Having a large beis presence makes learning in the beit midrash easier and more meaningful,” said 91Ӱ�� junior Uriel Simpson.

Among the robust cohort of YU participants, multiple approaches to Torah learning are represented. “We come from different backgrounds and were exposed to different elements of talmud Torah,” explained Legacy Heritage Fellow Rivka Lichtenstein Anapolle. “Seeing us come together for the sake of learning lishma will show the students that we can all come together and learn Torah.”

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Junior Navi Fair Melds Disciplines and Inspires Creativity

Yaelle — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 14:13:06 +0000

Last week, juniors in Morah Racheli’s Navi class presented a grand gallery walk for faculty and students that showcased their culminating projects for their unit on Sefer Zechariah. Students were tasked with examining one of the prophecies from the series of visions Zecharia experienced during the time of the building of the second Beit Hamikdash. Students had to explain the vision according to three meforshim – a rishon, an acharon, and a modern bible scholar – and make their own source sheets, as well as create a visual depiction of the vision to be presented to the class.

Students were extremely creative and brought Zechariah’s visions to life through art, clay, painting, 3D printing, stop motion video, and multi-media in a variety of innovative ways. Students also explained their artwork to the visitors of the gallery walk and discussed why that particular vision was canonized, how the message of that vision was meant for the Jews of that time and how it might apply to our lives today. Rabbi Pittinsky blogged about the project – and another example of project-based learning – .

“Project-based learning, like this example from my classroom, is the best way for students to tap into their ability to self-introspect, and inspires��them to think of what they’re researching and how it applies to them and their lives today,” said Morah Racheli. “This project comes at a critical time in juniors’��lives, when they are getting ready to go to Israel and college. I’m in awe of how creative my students are and the beautiful projects they create.”

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Like Clay in the Hands of the Potter: a Yirmiyahu, Pre-Yom Kippur Nach Project

Yaelle — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 19:24:36 +0000

To start the new year, the 91Ӱ�� Nach Department decided to do something creative for our 10th grade classes, to conduct class in the Art Room.

In 10th grade, we study the Book of Jeremiah. One of the many fascinating prophecies from the book is in chapter 18 when G-d tells Jeremiah to go down to the house of a potter and watch him do his work on the potter’s wheel. Jeremiah notes how the potter constantly reworks the clay, he makes a vessel and then pushes it down again. He can rework the clay as many times as he wishes until he designs the vessel to his liking. G-d then says that this is how he relates to the house of Israel. One moment he communicates a prophecy of destruction and then if the nation does Teshuva, he can relent, so to speak, and transform this prophecy for good. Likewise it works the other way as well. G-d can give a positive prophecy and if the people change for the worse, he can transform this prophecy as well. You can learn through this chapter and watch a beautiful video rendition of this prophecy .

Jeremiah’s vision can lead to many discussions on the true role of the prophet not as a seer who predicts the future but as one who shapes the future. It also opens the fundamental question about whether a prophecy for good can in fact be changed. For more on this, see the Radak on Jeremiah 18 and the Malbim on Isaiah Chapter 10-11.

This prophecy has been imported into our Yom Kippur liturgy in the classic piyut which highlights the Yom Kippur evening service for Ashkenazic Jewry, כחומר ביד היוצר, Like Clay in the Hands of the Potter. This piyut creates an analogy between clay in the hands of the potter which can be expanded and contracted at will and our complete dependence on G-d. The piyut then continues with many similar analogies between us and God and a stone in the hands of a mason, iron in the hands of a blacksmith, an anchor in the hands of a seaman, glass in the hands of a glass-blower, a tapestry in the hands of a weaver, and silver in the hands of a silversmith. Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik Zatzal as quoted in the�� says that this piyut represents the climax of the Yom Kippur evening service which focuses on the lowliness of Man and our complete dependence on G-d. You can read this piyut in Hebrew��and in English��.��You can listen to a stirring rendition of this piyut .

Both Jeremiah’s prophecy and the piyut create obvious opportunities for active learning. G-d didn’t tell Jeremiah about what it was like to be a potter. He showed him by having Jeremiah visit a potter and experience the process with his own eyes. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our students could do the same? What makes this possible at 91Ӱ�� is that we are blessed to have a very creative and talented artist and potter, Mrs. Ahuva Mantell, who heads our art department.

In past years, many Nach teachers have used her skills to demonstrate the art of pottery making when teaching Jeremiah Chapter 18. You can watch a video of her pottery demonstration from my 10th grade Nach class last year below.

One reflection from my students about this demonstration last year was that it was wonderful to watch Mrs. Mantell on the potter’s wheel and even have a hand on the wheel oneself but it would have been even more meaningful if every student had the chance to form their own pottery. One other reflection on this past year was that since we did this project when we got up to the prophecy in Jeremiah in December, we were able to reference the Yom Kippur piyut but it was not that relevant since students were already looking forward to Chanukah as Yom Kippur had passed months before.

This year the entire Nach department led by Mrs. Rachel Besser, our department chair, and my fellow Nach teachers, Rabbi Jonathan Schachter, our Rosh Beit Midrash, and Mrs. Racheli Weiss, decided to remedy this by conducting a complete art project in which Mrs. Mantell not only demonstrated the Potter’s Wheel but then gave students the chance to create their own pottery as well. This involved a little bit of moving around the curriculum, skipping to chapter 18 after introducing Jeremiah in chapter 1. However, we all felt that this year was an especially fortuitous opportunity to do this since we had an entire month of school prior to Yom Kippur to introduce Jeremiah and then conduct the art project.

Many teachers also noticed connections between chapter 1 and Jeremiah’s vision in chapter 18. For example, Mrs. Racheli Weiss realized with her students that in the first chapter, Jeremiah is told that he must destroy and uproot the people and then build and plant. This same language, לִנְתוֹשׁ וְלִנְתוֹץ, וּלְהַאֲבִיד…–לִבְנוֹת, וְלִנְטוֹעַ is used in chapter 18 as well. This reflects a fundamental idea which students experienced themselves when forming their clay. The first step in the process of working with clay is the beat it down again and again. One must do this to remove any air bubbles from the clay which would cause the clay the crack later in the process when burned in the kiln. Similarly, even Jeremiah’s prophecies of destruction were all constructive in nature, לסתור על מנת לבנות.

Personally, I participated in the project with my students. As I am not an artist or a potter, I found that I kept making mistakes with my clay. I formed something, was not satisfied with the finished product, and then broke it down again to start anew. I even came back later in the day to work with my clay again. It had already dried a bit so a creative art student showed me how to apply just enough moisture to be able to form it again. I became very invested in this clay. I could only imagine how G-d must feel in his multi-millennium investment in the Jewish people in trying to form them into an exemplary nation.

My Yom Kippur evening was so much more meaningful because of this chance to “imitate G-d” in the art room. Many students throughout different Nach classes also expressed how this project enhanced their Yom Kippur experience. Students said how they really understood Yirmiyahu 18 in a deeper and richer way, and many commented how excited they were to say the piyyut in shul. One of Mrs. Besser’s students even said that it changed his understanding of the entire Yom Kippur when he realized that all the davening is really about our relationship with Hashem.

In my class today, the prophecy and project led to a rich discussion comparing and contrasting Jeremiah’s vision with the Yom Kippur Piyut. In both sources, the יוצר, the Potter, is G-d. However, the question that was discussed is who is the חומר, the clay.

In the Piyut, the answer is obvious. The clay is each individual member of the Jewish people. We are the clay. We are totally dependent on G-d who molds and shapes our lives and sometimes even our very actions. For this reason, we plead with G-d on Yom Kippur night to look to his ברית, the everlasting covenant first made with Avraham at the ברית בין הבתרים, the covenant between the parts, and later reaffirmed at Har Sinai to all of the Children of Israel and not to look to our יצר, our evil inclination which has caused us to sin and stumble.

However, in Jeremiah’s prophecy the identity of the clay is not as clear. At first glance, it seems to describe the Jewish people. But after a more careful analysis, one student said that it was really the destiny of the Jewish people, the prophetic vision of the future that is the clay. G-d can form this vision and transform this vision from bad to good based on our actions. In this case, the prophecy does not speak to the Lowliness of Man like the Piyut but to the Majesty of Man, a theme that was the focus of our Teshuva program this year. Humanity is so great that based on our good choices, we can actually cause G-d the Potter to, so to speak, change his mind and reform the clay to make a better tomorrow than originally predicted. In Jeremiah, this works both ways. Not only can G-d reform the evil prophecy to good based on our Teshuva but he can also transform a good prophecy to bad based on our bad decisions. It is all up to us.

In a few months, after the clay has been given its final form in the kiln and the students have painted their creations, I hope that we can have some type of presentation to show our works. However, I fear what will befall my personal creation considering what is yet to occur in chapter 19 of Jeremiah. Stay tuned.

-By Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky
Nach Teacher and Director of Educational Technology

(Cross-posted on )

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